Stewart Engesser
ORP: What inspired you to begin writing or creating? Has that source of inspiration changed throughout your life?
Stewart Engesser: Both my parents loved books and reading, and reading aloud was a huge part of my childhood. I remember the conversation I had with my mother on the day I finished reading an entire book on my own – she told me that now I was free to go anywhere in the world and learn anything I wanted to learn. The thrill of that realization still resonates. As soon I was able, I began to try to tell my own stories, to portray voices and characters from my own imagination and experiences. My mother was a painter. As a little kid I remember watching her paint and smoke cigarettes, record player blaring, phone ringing unanswered, coffee forgotten on the table. She seemed both entirely focused, and entirely absent, transported to some secret place. What was going on there? It looked like an interesting way to spend time. Over time, the things that inspire me have changed, expanded, deepened…music, friendships, travel and time spent in wilderness, on mountain tops and isolated cabins…wind-bashed coasts, borrowed couches and rented rooms in cities… There have been so many writers, so many people and films and paintings and songs and pieces of music that have inspired me and continue to inspire me, it’s difficult to note even a tiny fraction of them. Lucia Berlin, Flannery O’Connor, Lorrie Moore, Mary Oliver, Denis Johnson, Hemingway, McPhee, Steinbeck, E.B White, Cormac McCarthy, George Saunders, David Sedaris, Billy Wilder, the Cohen Brothers, Wes Anderson, Bob Dylan, Mick and Keith and the Clash, the Ramones, the Pogues, the Minutemen and Nick Cave, Public Enemy, Wutang, the Grateful Dead, weird old rockabilly and blues, Django Reinhardt, Art Pepper, the Cramps, surf rock, Rod the Mod, flamenco…advertising jingles, complaints shouted in the street, music heard through walls, or drifting across a lake at night, mingling with loons, distant laughter, the sound of dishes being washed in a sink… I can sit on a rock in the middle of the woods for hours, absorbing the strange music that wants to show us everything.
ORP: Do you write or create with an audience in mind? If so, how do you consider the relationship between that audience and your work throughout your creative process?
SE: I write stories that first and foremost feel alive and interesting to me. That said, there are a few people who feel present as I write, who guide my hand in a way, and offer opinions and suggestions, and whom I trust and seek to please and entertain. Some of these folks I’ve never met… writers, musicians, characters in old books. For some reason the musician and writer Nick Cave has become a kind of creative barometer for me. He has such range, and works well in so many mediums, and I deeply admire his work. We also share a similar sense of humor, and an interest in darkness and tension and the strange vibrations hidden in a piece of creative work that seem to present themselves organically. I’ve seen him perform many times, but I’ve never met him, and so much of what I think about him is likely wrong. But I do sometimes find myself asking, hmmm…. What would Nick think of this line? I also write for friends and am lucky enough to have a few who are generous enough to read my stories and offer suggestions. A dear friend of mine, Jay Speiden, is another person who sits on my shoulder as I write. He and I were like brothers, and collaborated on many creative projects, in multiple mediums. His sense of humor, and love for language, vernacular, characters, the strange, beautiful, unexpected things people say, has inspired and guided me since we met when we were eighteen. He died several years ago, in Shanghai under somewhat mysterious circumstances, but I feel him around, still, and when a story is working, I can sense him sitting back, smiling, and saying in his quiet voice, yes. Yes.
ORP: What does vulnerability mean to you as an artist and/or writer?
SE: My stories tend to either arrive nearly whole, or over time, in whispers, small discoveries, overheard conversations, a line or two in a book, article, video or film. Either way, I find that being vulnerable, being open to the ideas, the voices and characters, wherever they are, whenever they arrive, is essential. When a story begins to present itself, I sometimes feel a desire to control it, to tell it what to do, where to go, who to talk to and what to eat. It’s a sure way to end up with something dull, something too tired and sore to sing. Stories feel alive to me, and when I set my own expectations, desires – my own ego – aside, often the story takes the reins, and the characters begin to say and do things independent of me. I don’t understand how, or where these voices come from, and I know this is a common experience among writers, musicians, and painters, this feeling of recession, as forces that seem to come from some mysterious beyond exert themselves. But I do know that being vulnerable, being open and honest and true to the story, to the characters, allows the story to develop, to start breathing and walking and singing on its own, getting into trouble, making bad decisions, having adventures, telling the truth, and hopefully growing up a little in the process. I love the feeling of laying down before a story and offering up my throat, showing it that I trust it, and hoping it won’t kill me. Writing is hard. Sometimes it feels like a story does want to kill me. When things aren’t working, I become distant, snappish, surly and impatient. The story dances away, and I try to lead it back, bribe it and trick it. It rarely works. But when I stop trying to force things, when I step unguarded into the river, and release myself from obligation, often the story reveals what it wants, and reminds me that all I really need to do is get out of the way, listen, have fun, and type. Denis Johnson referred to this experience as touching the mystery, and I can’t think of any better way to express it.
ORP: What books have you read many times?
SE: I’ve read Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson too many times to count. It’s poetry, it’s hard and soft and incredibly funny, it leaves you feeling dirty and revolted and somehow also cleaned, calmed, cared for, sung to, loved and lifted up and understood. I’ve been carrying that book around since it came out. Carver’s collected stories, especially the story “Chef’s House”, a simply beautiful rendering of how powerless and fragile we are, and how quickly our moments in the sun drift past, and how difficult it is to let things change without rancor. My absolute favorite writer of short stories, though, is Lucia Berlin. She was a master magician, and I read something of hers nearly every day. I don’t go anywhere without one or two of her story collections. Her descriptions, the compression of her language, and the speed with which she turns things around, presents an image or a line of dialogue that catches me utterly by surprise… she takes my breath away. And she is so, so funny. Hemingway’s collected stories, especially the early ones. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders, the two volumes of David Sedaris’ journals. The collected poems of Mary Oliver. I’ve also read Dispatches by Michael Herr too many times to count. He captures the surreal madness of the Vietnam War, the weird music and spookiness of it, the boredom and horror and beauty that never stops its' haunting. Train Dreams is another Denis Johnson book I read a couple times a year, a strange novella that seems like a dream, like something that arrived from a distant place, and is trying to return home. I have stacks of books by the chair where I write, and I dip into them often throughout the work day, reading a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, like visiting old friends, seeing what they’re up to, what advice they might have, where they went the night before, and why they felt the need to stay up so late…
ORP: What do you hope readers (or your audience) will take away from your creative work?
SE: I love humor, and hope that my stories make people smile, laugh, and enjoy themselves a little bit as I try to break their hearts.
